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KARACHI, May 27: A Sindh High Court division bench adjourned on Tuesday hearing of a contempt petition filed by a lawyer against the Sindh governor and the chief minister for appointing advisers in disregard of a court judgment.
Advocate Ahmed Yusuf Ali recalled in his contempt plea that he had challenged the appointment of advisers to the chief minister in 1998. The writ petition involved cancellation of an amenity plot allotted to Bahadur Yar Jang Foundation by Munawwar Ali Butt, co-operatives adviser to the then chief minister, Liaquat Ali Jatoi.
By a judgment delivered in June 2000, a division bench comprising Justices Ghulam Nabi Soomro and S.A. Rabbani held that the appointment of advisers at the provincial level was unconstitutional and declared the cancellation of allotment by the adviser void.
The bench noted that Article 93, incorporated in the Constitution by the Eighth Amendment in 1985, empowered the president to appoint five advisers at the federal level on the advice of the prime minister and “on such terms and conditions as he may determine”. ‘Insertion of an express provision for appointment of advisers at the federal level means that advisers like the ones contemplated by Article 93 cannot be appointed in the provinces’, it said.
However, the mention of “advisers to the prime minister and chief minister” in Article 260, as amended by the Sixth Amendment in 1976, for the purpose of their exclusion from the “service of Pakistan”, meant that advisers could be appointed at the provincial level, but only on the authority of an enactment. Yet an adviser appointed under an enactment or ordinance could not be conferred powers and functions of a minister as he was not a member of the cabinet, the judgment said.
The contempt petition came up before a division bench comprising Justices Wahid Bux Brohi and Moosa K. Leghari. Additional Advocate-General Qazi Khalid Ali questioned its maintainability and the bench adjourned further hearing for his detailed arguments.
CONTEMPT PLEA: A contractor has moved a contempt application against the Iraqi consul-general and four officials of the consulate-general for refusing to receive a court notice.
The notice was ordered to be issued in a suit for the recovery of Rs3 million allegedly owed by the consulate-general to the contractor for construction work. A dispute arose over the design of the structure and the consulate declined to pay the contractor the dues claimed by him. The diplomat is also alleged to have rejected the contractor’s plea to refer the matter to an arbitrator.
